Poems of effervescent grace from one of the best-known and best-loved poets of Portugal
With the elliptical looping of a butterfly alighting on one’s sleeve, the poems of Ana Lui´sa Amaral arrive as small hypnotic miracles. Spare and beautiful in a way reminiscent both of Szymborska and of Emily Dickinson (it comes as no surprise that Amaral is the leading Portuguese translator of Dickinson), these poems―in Margaret Jull Costa’s gorgeous English versions―seamlessly interweave the everyday with the dreamlike and ask “What’s in a name?”
“How solid is a name if answered to,” Amaral answers, but “like the Rose―no, like its perfume: ungovernable. Free.” There is much freedom within Amaral’s poetry, room for mysteries to multiply, and yet her beautiful lines are as clear as water:
And that time of smiles Which does, incidentally,
really exist, I swear, as does the fire
And the invisible sea, which with nothing will agree

What's in a Name

Literature & Fiction

Amaral, Ana Luísa

History & Criticism

New Directions

World--Ana Luísa Amaral's second collection with New Directions--offers a new exhilarating set of poems that convey wonder, bemusement, and an ever-deepening appreciation of life. Weaving the thread that connects the poem to life, World speaks of our immense human perplexity in the face of everything around us and our oneness with it all. As Amaral notes, all of us, "humans and non-humans, are on the same ontological level, the differences being only a matter of perspective. We are all made of the same stuff as dreams--and stars." Asked about her thoughts on World, Amaral's peerless translator Margaret Jull Costa replied: "What I take from this collection of poems is a sense of joy in the ordinary--seeing an ant going about its business, or a bee or a fish, or the feeling of sharing a whole history with a particular table, or watching a very ordinary woman sitting on a train playing with the handle of her handbag. World also brings us meditations on colonization, slavery, and whaling. Like the world, it is full of surprises and full of joy and sadness." These vibrant, exultant poems invite you to share this marvelous world: Yes, all you need (how easy!) is to say yes.

World

The first major collection of the poems of Ana Luísa Amaral to be published in English, considered to be one of the foremost Portuguese poets of her day. With a translation by acclaimed translator Margaret Jull Costa.

The Art of Being a Tiger: Poems by Ana Luisa Amaral (Aris & Phillips Hispanic Classics)

Liverpool University Press

The first major collection of the poems of Ana Luísa Amaral to be published in English, considered to be one of the foremost Portuguese poets of her day. With a translation by acclaimed translator Margaret Jull Costa.

<div>Ana Luísa Amaral, one of Portugal's most acclaimed contemporary writers, was born in Lisbon in 1956. A scholar of Anglo-American literatures with a doctoral dissertation on Emily Dickinson, she published her first collection of poetry, Minha Senhora de Quê (Mistressof What), in 1990. The Art of Being a Tiger offers a representative selection of Amaral's poems, from the 1990s to the present, in a precise and luminous translation by Margaret Jull Costa. The collection highlights the poet's manifold intertextual engagements--from Portugal's literary giants, Luís de Camões and Fernando Pessoa, to landmarks of second-wave feminist theorizing such as Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic. It foregrounds Amaral's passionate attentiveness to the here and now, as likely to result in transformative explorations of everyday scenarios of domesticity as to lead the poet to confront large-scale political crises of her day. Such is the capacious receptivity of Amaral's art of thereness, with its responsive capability always already disciplined by a poetics that is at once formally demanding and deeply idiosyncratic, and its artfulness always already in the process of yielding to the unpredictable pressures of the real.</div>

The Art of Being a Tiger: Selected Poems (Adamastor Series)

Tagus Press

Editorial Sexto Piso

Gaspar, o dedo diferente, e outras histórias (Colecção O sol e a lua) (Portuguese Edition)

Campo das Letras

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Amaral, Ana Luísa. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Amaral, Ana Luísa

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Amaral, Ana Luísa. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

What's in a Name

World

The Art of Being a Tiger: Poems by Ana Luisa Amaral (Aris & Phillips Hispanic Classics)

The Art of Being a Tiger: Poems by Ana Luisa Amaral (Aris & Phillips Hispanic Classics)

The Art of Being a Tiger: Selected Poems (Adamastor Series)

What's in a Name

Gaspar, o dedo diferente, e outras histórias (Colecção O sol e a lua) (Portuguese Edition)